Chapter Nine | The Places We Return To

She hadn’t planned to visit the orchard again.

Not this season, anyway. The trees had already given what they had to give, and the paths were quieter now—just the wind threading its way through empty branches.

But that morning, something pulled her there.
Not a voice, exactly. More like a memory rising to the surface, soft and persistent.

She drove with the windows cracked just enough to let the air in. The sky was a pewter grey, and the hills were caught somewhere between color and sleep. As if autumn had sighed and decided it had done enough.

The orchard gates were open, unattended.
She parked just past the entrance and walked, her boots sinking gently into the damp ground. The trees stood like quiet sentinels, their limbs mostly bare, but not forgotten. Beneath them, the earth smelled sweet and loamy. Familiar.

It was here—years ago, or maybe just last week in another version of her life—that she’d once come to try and feel something. Anything.
She remembered standing in this very spot, wrapped in a coat too thin for the weather, watching families laugh and pick apples, and wondering what it would feel like to belong.

Now, she just stood still.

No one was around, but she wasn’t alone.

Rowan’s voice broke through the hush.

“You came back.”

She turned. He held two paper cups, steam curling into the cold.

“I thought I might find you here,” he said, handing her one.

“How?” she asked, half-smiling.

He shrugged. “It’s the kind of place people return to when they’re not quite sure where else to go.”

She took the cup. It was cider. Warm and spiced, like memory.

They walked for a while between the rows, not talking much.
It wasn’t until they reached the tree with the crooked trunk—her favorite, though she’d never told anyone—that he stopped and sat at its base.

She joined him.

And then, as if it was nothing at all, he reached into his coat and pulled out a book. Her book. The one she thought no one knew existed.
Self-bound, handwritten, just a few poems tucked between pressed leaves.

“I found this,” he said. “At the market. Someone left it behind.”

She took it gently, thumbing through the pages, each one more familiar than her own reflection.

“I wrote these when I didn’t know who I was anymore,” she whispered.

Rowan looked at her, steady as ever.

“And now?”

She closed the book and rested it on her lap.

“I think I’m starting to remember.”

The wind rustled the branches overhead, not as a warning, but as applause. Like the world was bearing witness to something quietly important.

They stayed there a while longer. Two people under a tree with a bent spine and a memory of sweetness. Not looking for anything new.

Just returning to what was never really gone.